Joseph Zbukvic

An artist is a combination of the poet and the surgeon. - Joseph Zbukvic

This Yugoslavian born, Melbourne Australia based artist whose landscapes are delicate, while still remaining loose and showing off the best of the medium. He excels at capturing a wide range of values but my favourites seem to be middle valued paintings with subtle variations. Quite delicate and sublime. I've seen to of his videos and unfortunately the demonstrations mostly fell short of the mark. His one and only book "Mastering Atmosphere and Mood" has a number of good demonstrations that while staying rather vague are still good learning opportunities. Sadly the book is long out of print and only available as a download of dubious quality and legality. (I've added to this post to make it more obvious that the works below are those of Zbukvic and not mine, my apologies if in my brevity I misled anyone. 8/28/11)

Foot powered...on the Potomac Heritage Trail

So this blog is suppose to be about a few other things than watercolor painting so I thought I would write a small trip report of my hike/run on the Potomac Heritage Trail between Scott's Run and Roosevelt Island last week.

Anyone in DC knows we've had multiple triple digit temps and extreme humidity. Normally things I don't tolerate at all. For some reason my body is finally getting used to the heat and this summer I've been more tolerant than any other summer since moving south of the MD line. Anyways the reason I mention it is that Sunday was suppose to be a respite from the heat. I had planned on leaving early in the morning, but somehow early with Leila meant getting to the trailhead at 8 vs. 6. And it was hot and humid...so much for cooler temps.

I knew the Potomac Heritage Trail (PHT) trail somehow linked in to Scott's run but I had failed to bring either map or guidebook or read any recent trail description....yikes, talk about bad preparation (more to come on that topic) So I probably ran about a mile in Scott's run heading east and North towards the river hoping to run into it. BTW the maps at Scott's Run make no mention of the PHT so don't count on them being any help. My instincts proved correct and I did intersect the green blazed trail down by the overlook near the river. Once I got on it I mostly backtracked uphil and south towards some private pool club and a residential area. GAIA GPS on my iphone soon came in handy and showed me both the trail and the stretch of pavementt I would need to do to get to the real trailhead at the end of Live Oak Dr. right next to 495 here.

From this point is 10 miles to Roosevelt Island! If you start at Scott's run it's more than 10 miles so plan accordingly for water and stamina. The trail is in good condition but heavily blocked by thick layers upon layers of spiderweb. Between this trailhead and Turkey run I had to wave a branch in fron tof me to clear trail most of the way. It made for a slow 4 miles (1.5 hours). I passed someone's stashed water jug near some cliffs and thought what a good idea...although I assumed my 2 litres and planned 3 hour finishing time to be sufficient and left it alone...Not my water anyways. I was to think about that water quite a bit.

I don't want to detail the trail turn by turn but lets say that it is a good variety of terrain with great views on the Potomac.The stretches along GW Parkway are annoying but at least spiderweb free. From Turkey run onwards I made much better time but I ran out of water after 3 hours. My legs started cramping shortly after that and I got to Rosslyn in 4 hours, dehydrated, probably a bit heat struck and barely standing. Every piece of clothing soaked. I ran bare chested the last hour as my nipples were so chaffed from the wet top.  I lost 5 pds in 4 hours.

I suggest waiting for cooler weather to repeat, to cache water and to have at least 2 liters when starting with another 1-2 liters available along the way. Its definitely a nice trail although I could do without the sandy stretches and the cobwebs.

Friday Off

So that means painting between feedings, diaper changes, laundry and getting pho with Y and L....not my best work but still I got to paint today!

Fast.

Rocks

Mtns. & Flowers

Kenilworth Garden

Blooming! WN Indigo

More Sierras.

Sierras

Late night work. From 2009 photos.
On strahmore with MG palette. Experimenting with WN Pyrelene as well.
A beautiful color. Trying to figure out what I can mix it with to get
nice cool greys.

Friday night

I got to stay up late and (try to) paint.

Two more

First.

First painting since Leila arrived. A quick direct paint application
based on an image from Eric Valli's Dolpo book. MGraham palette and
cheap paper. Nothing fancy, it just feels good but selfish too to take
a few moments to try and calm down enough to put brush to paper and be
able to enjoy both the process and the results. I am a happy and lucky
man today.

Plateau take two.

Chisel pen + m. Graham wash in Holbein multi drawing book. About 10
minutes of work while Y was showering. Need to perfect the stealth
painting for when bunny comes.

Small studies of mountain aerial.

More Sandias.

Another try, this time on 300# Kilimanjaro paper with my full WN palette + a small study done later on a 140# watercolor strathmore visual journal page. The full version was done with an under-drawing traced from a digitally generalized image. Still needs work.

Sketch of Sandia Mountains from an aerial photo

 
I've been painting from a book of aerial images: "Over the Mountains , an aerial view of geology" by Michael Collier. The photos are beautiful but quite complex, and a challenge to paint from since the perspective (from the air) can be difficult to replicate correctly. But I keep trying.

This sketch was done without any pencil drawing. Just wet paint on dry paper. I feel more and more drawn to this approach as I like the spontaneity of it. I'm impatient and paint quickly, and first sketching out a pencil outline makes the process feel less fluid .  Despite the fact that it usually leads to better painting if I have a good pencil under-drawing I'm more drawn to just painting without it as it seems more instinctive. I am sketching almost daily to improve my drawing skills and maybe getting better at this will make it more enticing to draw in some initial sketch. Obviously value sketches are beneficial and I agree with my teacher that you can't paint it well if you can't draw it, but I'm hoping to eventually be able to paint "it" well without the line work, but to perhaps have  a separate drawing done beforehand as a guide.

I finally used up the last of the terrible Utrecht watercolor paper with this painting. I'm using a very limited M.Graham palette  supplemented with a bright green mixed from DaVinci PY3 Hansa light and WN PG36 phtalo green to try and replicate American Journey's Skip's green.

I'll try this piece again in a more deliberate way in my Kilimanjaro 300 pd paint book. I also just received 5 Saunders Waterford Fat Pads from the UK which I can't wait to try. But first I need to finish the Kili paper.

Lubber run paintout with Steve Fleming

Not so good

In Capitol Reef NP

Fuzzy nature

An evening's work

Came home with a strong urge to play drums and to paint. So I did. I had bought a cheap block of paper from Utrech on my way home so I could just practice with little regard for wastage. Big mistake. Cheap paper is cheap. I had tried this Utrech French made paper last year but had forgotten how bad it was. Not a pleasant experience. Anyways, this piece inspired from some fresh peonies given to me by a colleague was done on this paper. I used up 4 sheets tonight and want to throw the rest of the block out. I'll likely end up practicing my brush strokes on it guilt free.

I also started working with the Utah images. I'm going to call these two "warm up" sketches. I did grab some Arches CP for these however.

3 more mtns.

3 More